In The Valley of Elah: A movie review by Starhawk

In The Valley of Elah

A movie review by Starhawk

Due to a series of odd events and a couple of generous invitations, I was able to see a new film at the Toronto Film Festival: In the Valley of Elah. Written and directed by Paul Haggis, who won an Oscar for Crash, it’s a very powerful and tragic story of the toll that the war in Iraq takes on those who wage it. A young soldier, Mike Deerfield, goes missing on his first weekend back from Iraq. His father, Hank Deerfield, played superbly by Tommy Lee Jones, is a retired military man and investigator, and when he sets out to find his son, one grim layer of truth after another is peeled back. Mike, it turns out, has been brutally murdered. As Hank tracks the murderers, he is both helped and hindered by Charlize Theron in the role of a woman police officer with a young son whose sweetness and vulnerability play off perfectly against Hank’s toughness and bottled-up emotions. For Hank, who truly believes in America and all it is supposed to stand for, the horror of what has been done to Mike is slowly eclipsed by the horror of finding out what his son has seen and become in Iraq,

In the Valley of Elah is not the Iraquis’ story. That story needs to be told and heard, although probably Hollywood won’t tell it. Elah is a story about Americans, told from an American perspective, aimed at an American audience. But iit is also a story we desperately need to hear, the counterpoint to the drumbeats of endless war, for it faces us with the real price of our militarism, and the real limitations of its power—that the violence of war also destroys those who wield the weapons, and poisons the society that sent them forth.

One of the pleasures of watching thrillers and mysteries is akin to waking up from a bad dream. We all have secrets, things we’re ashamed of and things we fear being found out. When a fictional killer is tracked, his murderous secrets revealed, we can squirm vicariously and then wake up with that bright sense of relief we get when a nightmare proves to be only a phantom. Whatever we might be concealing, generally it’s not a corpse, and whatever we’ve done, we probably haven’t committed a heinous crime. Murder stories put our sins and troubles into perspective.

But with this film, there’s no easy waking. Because we are culpable. The horrors are real, and they are still going on in Iraq, and all our efforts have not stopped them. Whatever we have done, we’ve clearly not done enough.

Go see this movie. Don’t go alone—take someone with you, especially if you’re a veteran or you are friends or family of soldiers. Go this weekend, if you possibly can, because the first weekend will be critical in determining whether the film will get wider distribution and promotion, or will go directly to DVD and be seen my very few. If it dies on the vine, fewer movies with political content and timeliness will be made. If it does well, doors will open for other films that take on important issues and open up dialogue about them.

One of those issues is what we will do, as a society, for the thousands of soldiers who will ultimately return home, carrying horros within them—and facilities to help are thin on the ground. Those who shout loudest about supporting the troops are less than eager to fund their ongoing care and rehabilitation. Our streets are still full of the broken, homeless relicts of the Vietnam War forty years ago. What will happen to the new wave of veterans in a flailing economy, under a regime that systematically defunds and destroys every caring, nurturing role for government?

But mostly, go see In The Valley of Elah because it’s really, really good, written with poetic economy, directed with an understated restraint that strengthens the emotional impact of the story, and impeccably acted, it will wring your heart with pity and terror and tragedy is meant to do. And if enough people see it, it just might push the dialogue further toward peace.

Starhawk
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